Marginal note:Short title

1. This Act may be cited as the Veterans’ Land Act.

Marginal note:Definitions

• 2. (1) In this Act

  “common-law partner”

  « conjoint de fait »

  “common-law partner”, in relation to an individual, means a person who is cohabiting with the individual in a conjugal relationship, having so cohabited for a period of at least one year;

  “land”

  « terre » ou « bien-fonds »

  “land” includes granted or ungranted federal, provincial or private lands, and real or immovable property, messuages, lands, tenements and hereditaments of any tenure, and real rights, easements and servitudes, streams, watercourses, waters, roads and ways, and all rights or interests in, or over, or arising out of, and all charges upon, land;

  “Minister”

  « Ministre »

  “Minister” means the Minister of Veterans Affairs;

  “property”

  « biens » ou « propriété »

  “property” includes land and goods, chattels, real and personal, and personal or movable property, and all rights or interests in, or over, or arising out of, and all charges upon, property;

  “veteran”

  « ancien combattant »

  “veteran” means a person who at any time during the war declared by His Majesty on the 10th day of September 1939 against the German Reich and subsequently against other powers, has been therein engaged on active service in a naval, army or air force of Canada, or of any of His Majesty’s forces if at the time of his enlistment he was ordinarily domiciled or resident in Canada, and

  • (a) whose service has involved duties required to be performed outside the Western Hemisphere,

  • (b) who has served only in the Western Hemisphere for a period of at least twelve months, not including any period of absence without leave or leave of absence without pay, time served while undergoing sentence of penal servitude, imprisonment or detention, or service in respect of which pay is forfeited, or

  • (c) who, wherever he may have served, is by reason of disability attributable to or incurred during such service in receipt of a pension, and has been honourably discharged from such naval, army, air force, or other of His Majesty’s forces, or has been permitted honourably to resign or retire therefrom;

  and “veteran” also means a British subject who was ordinarily domiciled or resident in Canada at the beginning of the said war and who is in receipt of a pension in respect of a disability incurred while serving upon a ship during the said war;

  “Western Hemisphere”

  « hémisphère occidental »

  “Western Hemisphere” means the continents of North America and South America, the islands adjacent thereto, and the territorial waters thereof, including Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the West Indies but excluding Greenland, Iceland and the Aleutian Islands.

• Marginal note:Persons deemed honourably discharged

  (2) For the purposes of this Act,

  • (a) a person who would be a person described in the definition “veteran” in subsection (1) if he had been honourably discharged from the force or forces referred to therein shall be deemed to have been honourably discharged from such force or forces on the 30th day of September 1947 if not discharged therefrom before that day; and

  • (b) a person who would be a person described in paragraph 4(2)(a),(b) or (c) of the Veterans Benefit Act if he had been honourably discharged from the force or forces referred to therein or his service with such force or forces had been honourably terminated shall be deemed to have been honourably discharged from such force or forces on the 31st day of October 1953 if not discharged therefrom before that day.